


A Reaper's Vale

by Abby_Ebon



Category: Doctor Who, Doom (2005), Star Trek (2009), Torchwood
Genre: Deneva (Star Trek), F/M, M/M, Multi, Reaper!McCoy, Tarsus IV, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey, Vulcan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 05:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abby_Ebon/pseuds/Abby_Ebon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's dead, Jim." Only this time Bones is wrong, and Jack Harkness is a dead man who won't stay dead. Bones is a Grimm man who can't die at all; Spock is only a man half-human, and James is a name that died with Jack. JackHarkness/Grimm!McCoy, Jim/Spock</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Man That Died

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vigdis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vigdis/gifts).



> Recognition: This challenge is prompted by VigdisVale, and taken up by yours truly, both in recognition of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth (250) review of my story "Dehctiws" – and this fantastic 'little idea' of hers.
> 
> Timeline; "Doom", "Star Trek", "Torchwood".
> 
> 2009 –Torchwood, "Children of the Earth"  
> 2046 – Doom events take place; John "Reaper" Grimm/Dr. Samantha Grimm survive Mars's Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) Olduvai Research Facility; both 'infected' with "Chromosome 24".  
> 2053 - WWIII  
> 2063 -Warp flight achieved.  
> 2161 -The Federation Starfleet was chartered.  
> 2227 - "Leonard McCoy" born. John Grimm is 181.  
> 2230 - Spock born in the city of Shi'Kahr, Vulcan.  
> 2233 – James Tiberius "Jim" Kirk born  
> 2246 - Tarsus IV; Jack Harkness present/ Kirk is 13.  
> 2258 – Star Trek; Kirk becomes Capt. of the USS Enterprise  
> 5094 - Jack Harkness is voted "rear of the year"

_2246, Tarsus IV_

"Come on, kid, get up." This is a voice Jim Kirk will never forget, as it urges him, James obeys. In latter life, Jim will recognize this voice as something like the voice of his conscious; in later life, Jim will know this as the day James Kirk dies and Jim Kirk is born. A hand ruffles his (dirty and mud caked) blond hair, it's large and safe and strong. James looks to this man's face and knows he shouldn't be alive, he's dark haired for one, and his eyes are a dark hazel. James rubs sleep from his eyes, and settles down when he looks around to see the other kids safe, snuggled and tangled up with each other in sleep like puppies. It's the only way to stay warm in the freezing nights.

"What's up? The patrols don't start till sun up." James asks, because there is always a reason for these visits. His question is rewarded with a roguish grin, as if pleased by James alone, and James knows he doesn't have a dad – but if he did, he'd want a dad who grinned at him like that.

"Forget patrols, kid, forget this fear and stink and hiding – I'm getting us out of here." James can't help but believe him, but guiltily his eyes swim over the others, some older then James, some so much younger James feels like they're babies. James feels old in his bones and body, he knows he's starving, knows that this is what slowly dying is like. He tries not to think about it; tries only to survive the next day, and the next.

"All of us?" James asks softly, knowing that he's asking for the impossible – or a miracle. He nods, quick and sure, and James can't help but believe him.

"Damn right all of us. I've got our way out planned, a good old SOS screaming beacon." He rubs his hands together for warmth or out of sheer excitement. James rolls his eyes; for a simple plan it's got some stupid mistakes even James can see.

" _They_ have the food; they have the radios and broadcasters. How we going to get the single off if we're running from _them_." Dark hazel eyes dance, and grinning lips twist into a pout as if hurt that James thinks rather then believes in him, believes blindly in miracles and faith and impossible dreams. James can't – he's not a kid. Will never again be a kid.

"Easy James, we won't - I've got my ship working now." James sits back; his tense back eases against the dirt. He feels safer in the caves of the earth then near buildings or around ships; a warm hand rests knowingly on his shoulder.

"You have a ship?" James breathes around the words, fighting irrational fear – a ship brought him here; maybe a ship can save him – _save them_ , instead of doom them all.

"Yap, grew it myself. EDESNE last of her kind now." Those words are full of pride, but underneath is an endless sadness that James knows he'll no nearer now to understanding then he will be until his heart is broken.

James gets up, and looks back to the baffled if amused looking man sitting hunched over cross-legged. He had to squeeze himself into the caves, and now he'll have to squeeze back out.

"Come on Captain, time's wasting." James says outside the cavern, mocking a grown up he can hear coming a mile away with muffled cruses and more scraping then sounds safe. When he gets up and dusts himself off, the man's skin is untouched. It's always been that way, and James doesn't ask why; for the same reason he doesn't ask why the ENESNE is the last of her kind and what kind of ship can be grown.

"Well, we can't have that, can we?" The man mutters, and in his words is more meaning and history then a lifetime can include.

It's the Captains turn to lead and James turn to follow, they take back alleys and short cuts and twists and turns that go no where or double back a block the way they came. James says not a word of complaint; he knows this is for safety's sake. When the sweeping leather stills, James sees nothing and for a moment considers a trap and betrayal.

Guilt gnaws on the knots of his belly, when he sees the Captain putting a key into the wall, and James worries that the man might have lost his mind. With a grin thrown over his broad shoulders, like magic the wall _opens_ , the Captain waltz through with a wink for James.

James can't help but follow, because it feels _right_ , and while James leads children that trust him; it's a weight he has to grow into and following the Captain for now – letting the adult take the burden, he feels guilty for it, but it's not like the older man gives him a choice; he's the Captain, and James is 'the kid'.

One step though the wall, and James can't look anywhere else; it's a _swimming pool_ , an indoor swimming pool in a courtyard garden. Above are the stars, but when James studies them, they are not stars at all but pulses of the beating heart of this ship, above are the limbs and branches and narrowing to trunks that spiral down like columns; James wonders if this what it's like to stand in a jungle. It's warm and dim and when the Captain speaks, James nearly jumps out of his skin.

"Emergency broadcast beacon, recording message; Tarsus IV colony under the tyranny of governor Kodos; colony food supply comprised by disease, estimate more then three thousand murdered by Kodos, and more starving to death – request evacuation." The Captain spins back a around with a reckless grin on his face.

"How big is it?" James asks, unable to help his own answering grin.

"Don't know, like you, she's still growing." The answer comes with a shrug, and James eyes go to the rooms that branch off from this one, and a chill comes over him – if it's like sitting in the middle of an indoor courtyard, what if it's as big as a palace, a ship – could be as big as a world? No one would ever know, because it would all somehow fit.

"What does EDESNE. stand for?" James asks, knowing he's fishing for hints to who the Captain really is.

"Tim **e** An **d** Relativ **e** Dimension **s** I **n** Spac **e** ; all the ending letters." James thinks about it, and frowns.

"Wouldn't TARDIS fit better?" He says, because it makes sense that way.

"Nah, there will only be one TARDIS, and she's not mine." The lurking darkness that haunts the Captain is back, and James is sad he's made it come back.

The Captain takes a step out of EDESNE, and James follows, not noticing until he's beside him that he's tense and staring.

"Run, James." He says soft and insistent; James knows better then to argue or fight, so he obeys – but not far, he's hiding in an alley alcove, watching and waiting for the Captain to do what he has to and join him.

"Hey guys – how's it going?" The Captains hands are up, and he's clearly unarmed and smiling. The patrol doesn't care, it's armed and the man in front of them is clearly not a 'newly registered citizen'. They move in closer, threatening, swooping in like birds of prey.

The Captain waits until they are within arms length; then he breaks for it, as if to run. James knows it's a fake, and his grimy hands press hard over his lips, so his cry doesn't escape, he must not make a sound. He knows what this is; it's a sacrifice, a martyr's choice –one life for the greater good.

The Captain falls to the ground, like a spinning top, life and movement extinguished.

James waits, as he knows he must, until the patrol is gone, and then he's at the Captain's side, kneel with silent tears running down his cheeks.

"Jack…?" He hisses in the Captain's ear, but there is no response, save a low sound like growling coming from the wall. James looks up at it, and no one would mistake what he sees for any kind of wall. It glows and pulses like a heartbeat, and that low urgent sound grating against James' bones.

James goes to the living wall, and touches it – it's warm, and the sound is like breathing; his eyes are wide open, but it feels as if he's just blinked because the wall isn't a wall anymore; it's something else. James can't find words to describe it, or rather, there are plenty of words, but not one of them fit, and he can't string the words into a thought that others might hear and understand a glimpse of what he sees.

James watches it until it fades, and when it's gone, he turns to look at the Captain – who isn't there.

That night the rescue ships come; but it's too late for James, for the name James Kirk goes with Jack, and when he stumbles off ship into dry air and rich earth Iowa, his first words to his mother, his brother are:

"Call me Jim."

They do, because it's his only requesting plea, and he won't answer to _that name_ – it's the name Jack died to save, and if it's used again – it'll be Jack who does.

James died with Jack; but when Jim grows up and finds no record of Captain Jack Harkness, _ever,_ no birth, no death - nothing; save for deeper in the archives, where history whispers soft and sure of legends closer to lore then truth, he wonders if anyone died at all that day.

But facts are facts, and Jim wakes up screaming one name when he doubts.


	2. To Touch Eternity

_Vulcan, Time of Surak_

_(Roughly 4th Century A.D on Earth.)_

Jack wakes from his death with a cough. His lungs burn and his eyes see only an enclosed space of rolling smoke and walls - everything is too close, is invading, and _he can't breath_. Jack jerks up and crawls for the door, couching and hacking his lungs out along the way. He reaches the inner door and the outer door, and then he's inhaling great gulps and breathing out shakily.

 _'Phaser fire, not recommended – check, but what a way to go_ …' Jack thinks groggily, his brain waking up like a firecracker, in fits and starts and the pretty colors he can see behind his eyelids. With a pained moan he bows his head between his arms, cradling his skull on hands and knees.

"James…?" His voice and too rough and quiet, Jack knows as he speaks. He looks up and breathes in, noticing the humidity and the jungle spread out around him.

"James!" Jack cries out, aghast to be alone – to have left _that kid alone_.

"EDESNE!" Jack bellows, on his feet and in a fury, he rushes in and finds his eyes widening, the brows raised at the impossibility of what he sees being fact. EDESNE is a steaming and smoking wreck, for a ship of her sort to fly herself is within her ability, but to do it without her Captain? It's something Jack would have doubted, if she hadn't apparently done just that.

"EDESNE, please baby, we have to get back." Jack pleads and coos, trying to find a sign of life beyond the pale blinking of the switches.

"Damn it!" Jack curses, bitterly, there isn't a thing that Jack can do, and he knows it.

Jack lingers on Tarsus IV on the kid, James, and he's just stuck _here_ for who knows how long? Not that it should matter on a ship like EDESNE, but it _does_ , because this ship has more personality then most newscasters manage and might just outright refuse to take Jack where he wants to go when it's proven dangerous for his life and limbs.

Tarsus IV was exactly that.

" _Where_ is here?" Jack asks EDESNE aloud, his eyes on the humid jungle beyond his doorway.

An answer blinks on the screen, with a background of dangerous looking jungle: Vulcan.

"Since when..?" Jack asks in outright astonishment, trying hard to hide his disbelief.

The answer scrolls across and under the red lettering proclaiming 'Vulcan', it's in the 300s of A.D.

Jack groans aloud, though there is no one to hear.

"Well isn't that just _perfect_? We come from a dangerous colony on Tarsus IV with a limited population to a world of radically emotional and genius freaks? Does the phrase from the frying pan into the fire mean _nothing_ to you?" Jack rants and raves, pacing.

He knows he can't stay cooped up in EDESNE, already his nose is dry and his lungs are burning with the urge to escape for smoke free air. If he stays within much longer physically, it'll be dying of _smoke inhalation_ next – and that's just an embarrassing way to go and come back from for someone like Jack.

EDESNE, a little too smugly, gives Jack no response at all.

Jack throws up his hands and stomps out into the jungle.

And runs straight into a Vulcan, they collide with a thump, something like a grunt, a tangle of limbs and a sore bum – only on Jack's part, the Vulcan stands steadily, as if it barely felt Jack run headlong into him.

Jack tilts his head back to see what the Vulcan was staring at, because clearly something is wrong if Jack isn't spared even a glance for his inconvenient place and time.

EDESNE is a vase just big enough for a grown man to crawl into and out of.

In the middle of the jungles of pre-nuked Vulcan.

Captain Jack Harkness just can't win today.

"Are you a God?" It is asked in something between awe and doubt. The asker gives Jack pause, simple clothing belie the fineness of the fabric, the wealth that it proves. Jack has seen family's starve for lack of such, and seen thousands go in search of less in the grips of the desperation that breeds from greed.

"Immortal, yes - _omnipotent? Not so much." Jack confesses, just to get it off his chest. He's flippancy is clearly understood from the dark look he's tossed. Jack isn't sure if he should curse_ EDESNE's universal translator or just stuff it and be thankful.

"Clearly, little fool." That is most surely not friendly, drawled in a lazy threat; Jack stumbles back a bit on hands and knees. All for getting a better look at his inquisitor, then from his boots and fine but simple pants, dark hair tangles about his shoulders, which are slim and sharp, his angled cheeks and his endless black eyes are measuring Jack for worth.

 _Please like me_ , Jack thinks half toward the intimidating male standing before him, and half to his own subtle hormones.

Jack smiles shakily up at him, pretending for charm. Something in those dark eyes focuses like a tunnel toward light and the Vulcan bends and catches Jack's face in-between his hands. Very near the physical manifestations of mental focal points that the Vucans are very aware of, and Jack just realized the meaning of.

It's intimate and invading as the dark and rich Vulcan boldly tilts Jack's face this way and that, his focus – Jack realizes as lithe fingers scrape the edges of his blunt ear. It's not pointed. It's not Vulcan, it's all very human. Well, mostly human – Jack isn't as caught up in his genealogy as most galactic citizens, but what has two legs, two arms, five fingers and skin and two eyes and two ears and a nose and tongue that looks human, might be human, usually is.

Except when it's not.

Jack breaths out shakily, and the Vulcan very clearly inhales, very near his face. He breaths him in: it's more intimate a gesture then some blowjobs Jack has given and gotten.

"Nice to meet you…?" Jack breeches this silence, this focus and stillness, usually Jack would be all for what this dark Vulcan seems to be promising, wild sex in the middle of a hot and dangerous jungle - but usually Jack has a choice – and usually he's smart enough not to tangle with a Vulcan who can break Jack in half and tear off his limbs. He's got a feeling he'll come back from that too – but it'd be a hell of hurt, no doubt.

"Surak. And you will be my very own, little god." Just like that, Surak lifts him to his feet, and Jack takes a rapid breath that fills up the air in-between them. Surak, despite the fine cloth pants and the boots made out of the hide of some predator, isn't wearing much above the waist; instead he's a whirl of black markings and gold skin. There is something very much a warrior in that look he's giving Jack, as if Jack is his to protect and to direct.

"What?" Jack has to ask, because those fingers are still on his face and Jack feels something pushing boldly at the edges of his mind, what makes him _Jack_. So he thinks he might be excused for a lack of words when someone's playing inside his mind.

"I have been seeking you, little god. You are odd but worthy, and you are _mine_." A tongue laps from Jack's neck to his jaw. Jack is suddenly very interested in sex, now, thank you.

He thinks, maybe, his hormones had been working – _against him_ – from the start of this.

"Oaky." Jack gulps, and he's okay with this, the tongue, the dark eyes, the pointy ears.

"Mine alone." Surak assures with a purr, quick fingers slipping Jack out of his coat and his shirt, he wiggles out of his pants and his boots, and while bent over Surak gives his ass a quick slap. Jack teases with an eager squirm. It's playful, but there is nothing of play when Surak growls and pounces atop Jack, a heavy weight at his back.

"Wait…?" Jack mutters, trying to slow things down – just a little, so he can get his bearings, he feels lost - he feels unbalanced. But he _wants_ \- Surak's fingers pull at his hair and face, urgent. He's _here_ , he's _settled_ and he _needs_ this. Jack doesn't know if that want and need is his or not, and it's a scary realization that sends chills along his bowed spine.

It's a need and want he answers, none the less – willing or nay, with his own.

"We will be one." Surak promises, but his words aren't being spoken aloud.

They are being spoken _in Jack's head_ , and Jack will never forget them.

Jack pants and whines beneath the strength of the body and mind above him, that offers him protection so very willing and earnest - and it's a rush of pain and pleasure that mounts and twists into them both, that rides and is ridden, is given and taken, and Jack has never felt it's like as he's pounded and thrust into, hammered like flame and metal meeting and being born anew.

 _Mine_ , Surak agrees _, as I am yours_. Jack is bound and needed and wanted, and he never realized how much he craved this – wanted this – an echo in his mind, a bleeding between them. It's a wound that won't heal, no matter how much Jack sweats and strains and bleeds and dies.

Dying that is inevitable.

"No!" Surak speaking aloud is strange and new, Jack relishes the sound, even as he knows some stray thought of his inevitable and commonplace deaths had touched Surak. It's a memory of who Jack is, it draws his mind away from that bond with Surak, his limbs feel heavy and abused.

"What have you done to me?" Jack asks, demands, his voice rough and low - dangerous.

"We are one, mind to mind, body to body." Surak tugs at his mind, and something tumbles loose – a familiarly of that name slams into Jack.

"I know who you are." Jack says, and he does, as he _remembers_.

Surak of Vulcan, the near worshiped savior out of ancient Vulcan, teaching thought –logic - before deed, before action, before emotion. Surak's eyes widen to remember – to see – his own future within Jack's mind. Jack has always wondered how Surak came to know and teach such inner strength, and he wonders if this is how – if it was born out of this…union…between Jack and Surak.

"What was that?" Jack asks it carefully, fearing the answer. He would roll away if Surak was not so near in body and mind, and his hurt would be Jack's own. Surak knows what Jack is asking, about his actions, about his feelings.

"Pon farr, to which all of Vulcan are slave." Surak regrets so heavily, so guiltily, that Jack can hardly breathe.

"Okay, okay." Jack reassures, shaken.

For jack, Surak wrestles control of his emotions, mimicking – learning – the trick to it by following Jack's own wildly flowing emotions. Jack wonders what Surak sees inside his mind.

"You are worthy of me and mine, you are a force of nature tempered by reason." Surak's voice is full of true awe, as if Jack is some kind of god as Surak had asked before; there is no doubt in Surak now.

Unease fills Jack, floods him, and he worries to what he's done. Surak is essential to Vulcan now – and Jack has stumbled into it, must live though it, for he can't – won't leave. EDESNE needs the time to heal, and this point of time is good as any, save there is nothing advanced enough to speed things along.

"The fault is mine, little god." Surak tries to ease his feelings, dares to, carefully brushing his brown hair like a pet to be soothed. Jack can't help but accept that, curling toward Surak and his comfort – his mental heat and presence. Jack knows he'll never be alone in his own mind again.

"Ours." Jack disagrees, or agrees, and Surak smiles as if he sees a life full of Jack as something worth living for.

Jack's heart rises up in his throat, and he closes his eyes, feeling at ease for the first time after a very long time. Maybe it was accident that sent EDESNE here, or more likely by far, she knew he needed this.

He needed Surak, for all that time _should_ have separated them by thousands of years, but did not: had, in fact, twisted upon itself to see them meet.

 _To where will it lead next_? Jack wonders, as if in a dream.

For now, he can wait and see.


	3. Life On Mars

  _Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) Olduvai Research Facility_

_2046, Mars_

Jack wakes up, and it isn't like waking up from death, but it sort of is –is this, is the cold and alien cryostasis, he's woken up but he isn't quite himself yet. He doesn't know who he is, where he is, why he is where he is. It's like the worst hangover ever, he even feels sick, shaky and cold and sweating, and his head is pounding.

"What is _this_ Dr. Grimm?" Someone asks, male, sharp and dangerous, in a way that makes Jack want to get away from him as fast as he can. He's not feeling up to getting in a fight.

"This is someone who can help, a survivor, if we are very lucky." A woman, and Jack can't help but relax, things are never too terrible if women are about. Women make everything better. There was some kind of scientific paper about it once, so Jack's not being biased. He opens his eyes, and cringes, it's too bright, too lab like. Jack slides his eyes shut and hopes he can will himself to open them again.

"A survivor of that? Out _there_? Those monsters?" That's important, very important.

Jack remembers it, Mars, he's on Mars. He's not alone here. He's got Surak and Tolk'n, and his babies, Tal'n and T'Khut where are they? He moans, to make a noise, to let himself know he's alive he's not utterly broken yet.

"When..?" He thinks it's more of a slur than a word, and he opens his eyes – and there they are; there are the bones of his beloved Tolk'n and his little girl T'Khut named for the moon of Vulcan. He breathes in and out, slow, slow, slow, and remembers _monsters_. Those bones are old, so old. Whatever else he is, he is too late.

Jack reaches for Surak and feels…empty, an alone that echoes between mind and bone, strange how in almost a hundred years you can forget what it feels like to be alone in your own head. It had to happen sometime, Jack knows and isn't that stupid. He was always going to live longer than Surak. He just didn't know if he wanted to.

Now he doesn't have that choice, Surak is gone, their wife Tolk'n is gone, and their little girl is gone – Jack hopes Surak got away with Tal'n.

"Did he just speak English?" That sounds a lot like surprise. Jack opens his eyes again, looking at those that surround him, he's not surprised to see their military bearings, and the woman is Dr. Grimm. He looks at her, blond, slender and frail looking, but she looks at him with hope; like he can save her, answer her questions. Jack feels like laughing, but if he does, it will be with hysteria and he won't stop until he dies – and when he comes back, he knows something will have broken in him. So he doesn't laugh, yet.

Let her have her hope, it's more than Jack can offer her right now. He doesn't think he has any.

"When is this?" Not where, he knows where; Mars and someone had done something stupid.

"2045, if that means anything to you." It does, but the man who stares at Jack clearly doesn't expect it to. That's the kind of man who doesn't see people as being worth much unless they are valuable.

"Matter of fact, it does, means you're all idiots." There are four of these military types, and one Dr. Grimm. Brawn over brains was never good for species survival, nature tended to revolt against it.

"Can you tell us what happened here before? On Mars, the 24 chromosomes, the…the people here, were you one of them? What's your name?" Dr. Grimm pays no mind to the men, except for Jack. A small part of Jack can't help liking having her attention centered on him. With his wife and daughter's bones not quite across the room from him, it makes him feel like shit. Tolk'n would have only smiled quietly, accepting and loving him for who and what he was– and he had loved her, maybe not as much as Surak at first, because Surak had just happened – but with Tolk'n he'd learned to love, to share in that love.

"Sure, I can tell you lots about it. If you really want to know. Those bones you've got sitting there? That right there is my wife and child, Vulcan, which isn't human, but I don't think you know what the Vulcan are yet. Explains the 24 chromosomes to you, I'm sure. Alien, never been human, not from Mars, but the House had a settlement here to make me happy. Call it an anniversary present. They've never been human, but me? I'm sure you know what I am exactly, I'm human, but you aren't quite I am genetically, yet, give yourselves another three thousand years or so, maybe you'll play catch. " Jack tries to stand, but he's not ready yet, Dr. Grimm and some military stud with brown hair and eyes like hers eases him back down to sit.

"You're saying you're from the future?" There is doubt there, but that's reasonable.

"Yes. Yes that's exactly what I'm saying, now, Dr. Grimm, where is my ship?" Jack Harkness is no linguist, but he knows what he's speaking _now_ wasn't English as he learnt it, just as the English _now_ wasn't any kind of English two thousand years ago in England. He knows. He had to live it and learn it.

EDESNE is near; he can feel her, hear her. His head isn't entirely empty of echoes.

"Your ship…?" Dr. Grimm frowns, and it's clear enough she hasn't seen EDESNE. That's to be expected, if EDESNE doesn't want to be seen, she isn't the sort of ship to do hiding by halves. You have to know how to look for her to find her.

"We need to get out of here." Jack is sure of that much, putting Vulcans on Mars had to be one of the worst ideas in history _ever_. There is now some kind of sickness here, passed infected body to wound. It came about because of Jack, because Tolk'n had wanted a child from Jack, a partly human child.

Only Jack wasn't quite human, he knew that – but hadn't thought about it, hadn't thought it through; that he couldn't die, that something in him was wrong. That a Time Lord like the Doctor had loved Jack Harkness but hated that fixed point in time for a reason – something in Jack wasn't _him_ , but sick, twisted, evil.

It had been given life by Tolk'n who had mixed DNA and infected what she had sought to make anew, a life, evil which sought out the evil in others chromosomes. Turning the very stuff of life into something to be feared, the Doctor's worst nightmare which he had never warned Jack of.

It was his making, this…evil. It would warp and twist everything, when Tolk'n had only had the best of intentions at heart for him, for them all. Jack took what they said about the best of intentions and hell to heart.

"Is it just you here?" Jack asks, because he has to be sure.

"It should be. I ordered the rest evacuated to Earth through Ark. It should be us and Pinky and Dr, Grimm here all alone. Only it isn't, there are monsters out there that Dr. Grimm wants you to help explain; only you've been on ice for God knows how long. So I don't see how you can help, whoever or whatever you happen to be." Muscled and big, the man in charge looks to his men, all three of them. The odds Jack knows have been against them from the start and maybe this man is just starting to realize that.

"I am Captain Jack Harkness – and I'm getting our asses out of here. Those things as you call them, the monsters? Those used to be people. They got infected. Not everyone can be infected, but they're looking for…for someone like themselves to carry on the mutation. Not everyone can be a carrier. Or, should I say, not every carrier reacts to hosting the chromosomes the same way. Most can't make it work right. It was meant to be a gift. Something wonderful…." Jack doesn't look any of them in the eyes, and let them make of what they want out of what he says. Dr. Grimm frowns thoughtfully, touching him, keeping herself beside him, letting him know it's alright simply by her hand on his back alone.

He misses Tolk'n fiercely, an ache that hammers between in heart and head, but he dares not look to where her bones sit, holding their child protectively, hand out stretched to defend against something none of them ever saw coming.

Jack wonders if she ever got into cryostasis; or if her last act was to protect Jack and their daughter from the monster in his DNA that had wanted to make Jack into something to truly be feared.

"Kid, Duke, we'll head out to check the ARK, if we've got to get off Mars, Mr. Harkness, we do it my way. Not by some ship no one has ever seen, or knows where to find." His words make it seem to be the last word on things, a sure thing. Jack can tell the two them will never get along.

"Sarge?" The brunette with Dr. Grimm's eyes speaks up, frowning in confusion at his commanding officer.

"Reaper, get the Captain and your sister moving as soon as you can. Keep our asses covered." A nod is all the answer 'Sarge' takes, and he leaves, taking what Jack recognizes as a Bio Force Gun with him. It explains how they got the bodies that Jack takes note of, twisted and ruined. A fixed body beyond repair, there is no helping those who are infected. They are monsters – as good as dead.

There had been no way to heal them; no Vulcan technique could save them from what Jack's DNA had done to them.

"Captain Jack Harkness, I'm Doctor Samantha Grimm, this is my brother John – whose Marine unit apparently dubbed Reaper, lame, but what can you do about little brothers?" Jack lets himself smile without bringing to mind his own brother.

"I'm sure he's worth the all trouble he gets into." And that's probably plenty, with the look Sam shares with her brother, fond and exasperated.

"Hey, I came to help _her_ , this kind of thanks I'm going to get?" Reaper rolls his eyes, not taking Jack seriously, there is teasing in his tone and Jack thinks he could get to like these two. Seducing siblings can have its benefits.

"We had been handling things fine here. We didn't need help, not that you've helped, I think your…Marines have made all this worse." Sam sneers just a little bit at the bodies of those former Marines. It's obvious she isn't the kind of Doctor used to dealing with _fresh_ human or former remains.

"Could be…" It isn't arguing its agreement, thoughtful but worried. John Grimm wants out of here, and he wants out with his sister alive. Jack likes him for that, a lot. He tries to stand this time and gains a measure of stability; Sam hovers over him, nervous and careful, as if afraid of both helping and hurting at the same time. He wraps an arm around her shoulder and keeps them both steady as he learns to walk again one step at a time.

He sees it when they pass where C-24 is bottled and capped; she takes three vials and tucks them into her lab coat pockets. Jack says nothing; he knows her kind of curiosity. It was meant to save lives, and if it found the right person, a good person, a person like Jack, it could do more than save a life. It doesn't matter if Jack likes it or not, it's his legacy, its Tolk'n's too. Let Sam Grimm do with it what she wants. Jack only hopes she ends up being is as smart as she thinks she is. Some people surprise Jack like that.

Jack would hate having to steal back his own DNA when she looks at like it's an elixir of life. It's most flattering. Jack Harkness knows his vanities and vices and virtues, and knows too, that sometimes it's hard to see one without the other.

They make it to the Ark and that's when Jack stops dead, he sees what others do not, he sees EDESNE and feels cold and hot all at once.

They've ripped her guts out and tied them between Earth and Mars, made her into their teleportation Ark. EDESNE is so much more. They probably just thought that they were taking rocks from one of Mars's strange pillars and detected a pulse of energy between two points, didn't know why, but thought to use it to their advantage if they could.

"Oh, baby…" Jack goes to her, forcing John and Sam to either follow him or let him go to her on his own. Hurt or not by cold sleep, frozen down to his very DNA. He's aware that they are at either side of his elbows, but his attention is all for the stone pillar split down the middle. He touches her, and her chameleon circuit skin shivers, warming under his hand into her proper coral colors.

"That's a good girl, it's alright now, I'm here … what have they done to you baby?" He can guess. It makes him sick and furious.

"What…what is _this_?" Sam looks upon EDESNE wide eyed and awed, learning too late her true nature and beauty. She shines and bleeds. Jack's got to put her back together; he's got to do what's right because he can't leave her on Mars like this. EDEDNE is the Ark though, and she's the only way John and Sam Grimm are getting home. Jack hates having to introduce her to these people, people who may have hurt his baby girl.

"This? She is this, she is one of the very last of her kind, been called a lot of things these beings have, as many names as dimensions and spaces and places as they've disappeared into and came out of. This is EDESNE, the last, we think." Her coral shines like the old aurora borealis in the North of Earth, but there are Southern lights too; it's all solar winds and a planet's atmospheric weather. Both magnificently beautiful and terrifyingly powerful, the Time Lord's had a bit of lore like the Green Flash of old Earth sailors, that where there is an aurora borealis, a TARDIS had crossed that way.

"Sam." John Grimm – a man who calls himself after the Reaper, should not sound so strained and sick. Jack looks- and Sam goes still and silent, wide eyed, there is something dead that looks like it wants very much to hurt them.

"Time to go, yeah, guys?" It's Jack's turn to grab them up in a hurry, pulling them along as he slips into EDESNE's insides and takes his place at her console, urging her to put herself back together. She's a good girl, solid and dependable, and does the best she can to do what Jack asks.

Jack knows he risks a time ram the size of Belgium if the two parts of EDESNE don't "recognize" each other as separate parts of a whole. It's worth the risk and when he shuts his eyes tight and nothing happens, he opens them with a glad cry. So much for humpty dumpty, fires and frying pans – Jack gets out just seeing how EDESNE looks, and he supposes John and Sam get out wondering where they are.

"Is this Earth?" There's a gun shot, and Sarge comes into view with a scowl to match every inch of his anger. Jack doesn't have to answer John now, so that's something worth saving time about.

"You brought it here!" Sarge shouts down at Jack sparing not a glance for the black body-sized box. It's too bad he lacks imagination; one never knows what's in a box until it's opened.

"Brought what?" Dr. Grimm asks, stepping into Sarge's space, getting between Jack and the larger man. John eyes are on Sarge and he's got a good grip on his gun.

"That knight out of hell! It showed up with you, didn't you notice?" Sarge's sneer speaks of their idiocy. They brought that thing to Earth, Jack knows, and that must be against the rules. He doesn't think it's imposable for something to hang onto EDESNE, he'd clung to the Doctor's TARDIS. Not a death he'd care to repeat, but the evil that's spawned from his DNA is already dead – it just doesn't know how to stay dead.

"Was a bit busy, sorry…" Jack pats EDESNE gently, comforting and proud of her for preventing a Belgium-sized abyss in space, time and dimensions. She's his clever girl.

"Sorry? You will be Ice-Man, we've got to do a clean up." Reaper goes pale and sickly. Jack frowns between the siblings. A _clean up_ suddenly sounds sinister, more of a sweeping execution, instead of picking up a mess... Jack hopes he's wrong and bites his tongue to keep from leaping to conclusions.

"Sir, no, sir we don't need to do that, my sister – Dr. Grimm, and the Captain, they've found an answer." Reaper speaks up, swallowing down his clear discomforting distress and disgust.

"Clean up? What are you talking about? Now that we've got evidence that the infected can chose between its hosts, and that it's seeking out a certain sort of genetics, we can stop it without resorting to that measure!" Dr. Grimm rallies to her brother's words and meaning, her outrage plain on her pale features.

"Sarge I found Pinky!" Duke comes out, holding onto a man with no legs, who looks at Dr. Grimm with small hope.

"Ah, good of you Duke!" Sarge takes aim for Pinky, whose eyes are wide open and staring.

Jack stands on unsteady footing, shaky in every movement. He wants to yell and draw down this madman's attention on him and run away with EDESNE to someplace far away that Sarge could never hope to follow. He can't, he knows what bad shape he's in, and EDESNE just put herself in one piece after being split in two and put between two planets. She'll need time to heal a wound that wide and gapping.

"Survivors, Sarge! I've found uninfected survivors, lots of them!" The Kid chimes in, walking into the conversation without taking heed of any warning in the tones the Grimm siblings have taken against Sarge.

"Very good, Kid, precede to execute them. We can't risk the infection reaching the surface and spreading." Wide eyed, Kid looks at Sarge as if he's just starting to see the crazy in him.

"Sir?" It's very soft, uncertain; the boy looks so young – no wonder they call him Kid. Jack can't stand for it. He starts to shake his head, to say something – anything. Sam looks to John, begging her brother to say something, do something, to get through to his commanding officer.

"You heard my orders." Sarge waves, as if expecting Kid to go off and do as told just like that.

"No, Sir, that's not needed!" Reaper steps into Sarge's space, but Sarge pays him no mind. His eyes are only for Kid. Who hasn't moved, who stares at Sarge in sick disbelief.

"Kid?" Sarge frowns, and not knowing if he can trust his own men, not knowing who is and can be infected and can't be. He's scared, Jack can get that. A Marine is supposed to follow orders, but the Kid isn't.

"No!…No, I won't, Reaper... they are non-infected humans, I'm sure of it!" With one startling sound he's dead, just like that, the Sarge has executed him without a word. Jack shakes because there wasn't a warning or need for it.

"Stand down, sir, you're relived of duty." Reaper's got a gun against Sarge's head, and Duke's got one on Reaper – but Pinky's got one on Duke.

"You too John?" Sarge flicks his eyes on Reaper, to Dr. Grimm who stands in front of Jack. What Sarge thinks of Jack is plain on his face. That's alright with Jack – he's not thinking much better of himself, but worse of Sarge for sure.

"Don't cross that line Reaper, there's no going back from it." Duke warns, and Picky laughs – half of a man, maybe, without his legs, but he's holding off a free for all bloodbath. Man's got spunk and guts and Jack likes him.

"You'd be surprised what you can live through." Pinky warns, dry and dire too.

There isn't a lot Jack can do, four guns are far too many – but he doesn't say anything when he sees the hell knight staring at him. He stands and shakes and hopes he looks good enough to eat.

 _Come on, come on, come and get me big boy_.

Jack holds onto Dr. Grimm's arm, it tightens and the hell knight bolts forward in attack, intent on grabbing a host to infect. Jack brings her down and shoves her into EDESNE, putting his body between her and the attack – Reaper fires and retreats toward Jack, Duke and Sarge scatters and run, the infected on their heels – but Pinky gets grabbed up and the darkness swallows him up along with the hell knight.

Jack grabs Reaper and EDESNE shuts them up inside herself.

The lights flicker, Reaper groans in the belly of EDESNE, and Jack sees the dark blood pooling beneath him. It's a red that's almost black.

"Shot yourself with your own weapon, Reaper?" Jack holds onto the wound, puts down as much pressure as he can muster, but it's in John's gut and there isn't anything to do for him, no medicine can heal this, EDESNE isn't an ambulance.

"Oh, John…" Dr. Grimm fingers the vial and needle, and John sees it.

"No, sis, you can't risk I'll…I'll become that, one of those, I'm not good enough." Jack meets Samantha Grimm's eyes and knows that what John says isn't true. She's a scientist and they tend to test things out before they jump into a situation with a solution. She's either got the faith of a saint, or the smarts of a scientist, but Jack thinks she's one of the rare ones with both.

"John Grimm, you're a good man with good genes, I ought to know – your genes are mine." She sinks the needle into and under John's skin and lets the vial empty into him. They aren't just siblings, they are twins.

Jack watches as Samantha Grimm takes the second vial and gives herself just the same dose as her brother.

"Why?" Jack asks her, wondering why she'd risk herself when she's not sick – it might save John, but it might not. They've both got a little of Jack's DNA in them, and he feels…he doesn't know what he feels.

"I can't let him go through this…this life, alone. We…we're orphans, all we have is each other." Jack kisses her brow as she goes under, the DNA taking her and shaping her, changing them both. They're going to be fixed in time and space and all points of dimension – just like Jack. There won't be any changing them after the fact of it.

Jack watches over them and waits, but when they wake, they aren't monsters – but something more. Something, someone like Jack – he's never let himself get so lonely as to be depressed, but this is…soothing. It's reassuring, not to be alone like he has been. It's not like Surak, but Jack doesn't think he's got it in him to be someone else's t'hy'la.

Not yet. He's got to find out what happened to Surak and his House yet, there is Tal'n to find. Jack isn't entirely without hope.

"What do we do about this?" Sam asks of Jack, touching his hand as if to wake him gently to reality. He ran and hid and kept them alive while others died. He's not proud of it, but Jack will live with that choice.

Better to save a few than to risk certain death, the right combination of genes like Jack's is rare enough, and a gift – best not to squander it.

"You got a grenade in that get up, John?" Jack Harkness asks, and when the Marine nods, he takes it into his hand.

"I'll be right back." People talk about banishing demons, Jack knows – but there is banishing demons and then there sending them back to hell with fire and brimstone. Frankly, Jack doesn't mind lighting them up on their way.

Lockdown was activated by Sarge, Jack thinks. They can't get out but it's as easy as fiddling with the mechanics of the elevator to the surface that EDESNE sits on to get them going on their way.

Jack looks around at the depths of darkness that surrounds him. It moves, and growls, and watches. Jack's never been one to flinch from the abyss, but he's damn well not going to let it follow him like a shadow.

"Fetch." Jack tells the lot of them, his demons, his twisted up DNA monsters.

Jack Harkness lets the grenade go rolling into that seething, breathing dark.

EDESNE opens her maw, and though Jack is cold down to the depths of his bones he'd rather freeze than fry in this hell pit.

"It's done and over." Jack tells John and Sam, wondering all the while just what it is he is supposed to do with them. He feels responsible for them, no doubt about it, they aren't his kids, more like imprinting hatchlings.

"What do we do now?" John asks, burly and brown haired and in need of a shave. Jack could grow to like him and his gruff stand-off ways.

"Whatever we want." And that's the gift and cures of it that these two kids have got to learn, that they _can_ do anything and everything – and no one can stop them, they are the immovable object and unstoppable force given flesh and blood and bone of a fixed time and place in space and dimension.

They aren't only that, they're human too. They'll have to live with what they do and don't do and have done. It's a trick Jack has trouble with still; learning to forgive himself.

Jack's never mastered it, Rose and River Song and Torchwood and the Doctor taught him what the right thing and the wrong thing was, how to be that balance on the blade between good and bad, a monster and man, and Jack only hopes he learnt well enough from them how to teach it to these two.

There certainly isn't anyone else left that Jack could trust to turn this to.


	4. The Woman That Made Waves

 

_Deneva Prime_

_2247+_

The Doctor's daughter walks out of the sea, and remembers only fleetingly her father's face, but it's the enemy that causes her to forget – and she has forgotten. It's been a short life, less than a handful of years, yet she stands on the sand full grown and thinks of seashells and foam and doesn't know where that image comes from. She isn't alone though, so perhaps she snatched that thought up from a mind not her own, for she is so, so lonely.

Proof that she is not alone comes with the sound of a voice, like the breaking of a wave.

"Hey, are you…okay?" It isn't, after all, every day that Jim Kirk sees a woman walk ashore from Aurelius Ocean. She's as blond and blue eyed as he is, but lovely in a strange and absentminded, uncaring sort of way.

She _looks_ at him, sees right into him, and her blue eyes are so sad that Jim just knows she's not normal. She sees his scars, every one of them, and she doesn't look away afraid or ashamed. There's difference between sharing sorrow and pity for the wounded, and this, her sadness, she gives it to him like it's a gift. She's seen things just as bad as he has, and has survived them – like he has – with scars that they can hide from everyone who matters, except each other.

It's unnerving and Jim Kirk doesn't like it in the least.

She doesn't answer him, he realizes as she just stands there in the sand without a stitch of clothing on her, and very likely doesn't understand a word he'd said. He offers her his hand, and she takes it, and Jim takes her home. He's fourteen and it's the first time he's felt connected to anyone outside his family.

On his great grandmother's porch, two old Vulcan women play chess, their quiet and serenity broken only by the surf against the shore, the crying of birds, and the click of black and white pieces on the board. It's two-dimensional today, because T'Pau won yesterday, so it doesn't surprise Jim Kirk when T'Pol is the one to look up as he climbs the steps.

T'Pol arches a brow, tilting her head at the sight of Jim bringing home a girl with only her hair covering her up. She waits until Jim breaks the silence between the four of them. Jim likes her for that; she lets him remember how to say what he needs to before she demands reasons. Jim went a long time without saying more than what needed to be said to survive, one day after another.

"Can you get my second foremother, T'Pol? Tell her I'll be in mom's rooms looking for something for her to get into." T'Pau looks the girl over, and what the Vulcan woman makes of her, Jim won't ever know from her face. T'Pol glances to her friend, and goes quick and quiet.

Jim leads the girl past the porch; his great-grandmother's house is more of a mansion for it fits his mother's family in it easily. So far as Jim knows, T'Pol and T'Pau are close family friends of his great-grandparents, and aren't guests. He'd learnt that when he asked his mother when they'd go home to Vulcan and Winona had laughed and told him they'd lived here since before _she'd_ been born.

So they were very old and not so much friends of the family as a by now a part of the family themselves. T'Pol, he'd figured out, was married to Trip, his great-grandfather's best friend. How T'Pau fit into things, he didn't quite know yet – but she was dignified and small and powerfully fierce, and a Vulcan priestess. Or princess - Jim wasn't quite sure if she wasn't both.

Jim goes by her, not quite meeting those dark Vulcan eyes and takes the girl to his mother's door. Winona isn't in her rooms, she's off somewhere between Deneva Primeand the stars. George Kirk's sons have taken names shorter then there own, so it was with George Samuel Kirk, now Sam, and so it is now with James. It's their only way of making their names their own.

So while their mother isn't here - Sam, though, is here. Jim's never seen his seventeen year old brother's eyes so wide. He stares, but if it bothers the girl, she doesn't show it – in fact she stares right back, equally blunt and curious.

"Uh, what are you doing, Jimmy?" Sam asks, whispers soft, as if the girl can't hear if he does. Jim rolls his eyes, because he knows she can hear and understand, but for some reason just can't speak. Jim hopes that he's brought her somewhere she can get help and not just be ogled at by his older brother.

"Helping her get dressed, _Sammy…_ " His mother's dresser is of old oak, and it's as big as most beds would be. It's got a closed closet that can be locked but never is. Jim takes a purple dress he thinks his great grandmother will approve of. He gives it to the girl, who touches it as if she's never seen the color before, but she doesn't need Jim or Sam to help her put it on, she does so with a shrug and a little shimmy.

Her smile is pleased, as if she wasn't sure she'd remember how to put a dress on.

"Where she'd come from?" Sam asks, blushing now that she's clothed, as if he'd just realized how much he'd been staring from the start.

"Aurelius Ocean, just, I don't know, walked out of it. Like a goddess." Sam glances at Jim, measuring and judging, as if trying to gauge what his brother thought about the girl he'd brought home. Jim was careful not to let it show. Sam wouldn't hurt him if he knew, wouldn't tease more than any other brother, but Jim had learnt to keep everyone at a distance.

"Well, she's certainly lovely enough." Hoshi Sato, his great grandmother's voice washes over them like a wave, startling and not to be ignored. Yoshiko, Jim's grandmother, stands at her side. The girl looks to her, and Jim doesn't know how, but smiles wider and speaks – says something, a sting of words that Jim can't quite make sense of.

Hoshi's eyes widen, and she parrots it back, and it goes on that way, back in forth, a conversation that Jim can't follow. He feels envy stirring in his belly, stealing his breath, but his great grandmother speaks before it grows to be more than heat.

"She says she thinks your kind, Jim – and that Sam's lovely…" At her mother's words, Yoshiko's lips twist into a teasing grin, and Jim is glad he isn't Sam. It was by Yoshiko's late husband that James Tiberius Kirk got his first name. Michio Sato, Hoshi's grandfather had named her first born daughter for Toshiko Sato, his sister.

"What's her name?" Sam demands, eagerly, and Jim can't help but dislike that he got to ask first.

Hoshi questions her, but the girl never has an answer. They call her Aurelan, after the ocean. Hoshi Sato teaches both her great grandson's her language when they ask to learn it. It's only in Jim that the learning grows to become a love of languages, both human and alien. Its stories that Jim Kirk loves, and when he finds one in a book he can't read, he asks his great grandmother to teach him that to. Hoshi Sato does not say no.

That it's Xindi and that the Federation had forbidden that language from being put into the so called universal translator, her life work – well, she only tells him to be wary of sharing it.

It doesn't surprise her much to learn one night that Jim and Sam use Xindi as their personal language. She is, if truth be told, quite pleased. Jim only teaches his brother – and Aurelan – until they both break his heart, by telling him they are getting married.

"He wants me to be his best man." Jim says when Hoshi goes into her youngest great grandchild's room without knocking, knowing he expects her.

She keels to look into his wounded blue eyes. Hoshi's smile is warm and she offers her hand for the boy to hold onto, if he wants. He sees no pity in her, but understanding and strength. He takes her hand, and Hoshi folds hers over his.

"James." Hoshi doesn't know what she's going to do until she sees the look in the thirteen year olds blue eyes. Kirk is his last name, but those eyes are all Archer.

"James was my grandfather, I'm _Jim_." Hoshi Sato nods but once. Hoshi understands all too well about names and language and symbolism.

"Of course you are Jim." Hoshi offers a distracted half smile, as if she's a great-grandmother who forgets these things and to be forgiven. No one her knows her is fooled, but Jim scoots to offer his seat to her. Hoshi pets a hand though his blond hair, and wonders at what he's seen that he can be so temperamental one moment and timid with polite unspoken offerings in apology the next.

She's reminded of Jonathan's beagle, a hurt animal that can't be left alone – but thinks it should be to lick its own wounds. She takes his spot, and Jim settles at her feet, leaning against her knees. Hoshi keeps soothingly stoking golden hair, and tells stories, all true, all about their family and hardship, adventure and adversaries, struggle and survival. A history shared makes the past and present blur out of the shadows.

"What will you do?" Hoshi finally asks, and when Jim looks to Earth's solar system – stickers on his ceiling – she understands. That night, she calls her granddaughter home, to comfort one son and send the other down the aisle, and tell Winona that she'd best tell Frank that his nephew was going to Earth.

"Are you sure about this, Winona?" Frank, she knows, is only trying to be helpful with terrible timing. At least that's the cause Winona gives to name her frustrations with her older brother. She glances to the one woman to who makes the difference in staying here or leaving. Hoshi Sato sits up from behind Winona and meets Frank eye to eye. Light years upon light years part them, but Hoshi alone can still make him listen where anyone else might fail.

"After Tarsus IV, James… _Jim_ , like any thirteen year old, needs stability. On Earth, you failed to give him that, Frank – that is why, I assume, he ended up on Tarsus IV to begin with, yes?" Frank swallows down his words, guilt haunting his brown eyes. He nods solemn and otherwise still, when it becomes obvious Hoshi is waiting for his response. Her smile is tight and sure. She's always been fonder of Winona than of Frank, and has never hidden what she thought of their father James – who Frank takes more after than Winona.

"I can provide stability on Deneva Prime for Jim, but not without sending Sam away. I won't do that. Jim _wants_ to go, Jonathan is so sure of it he's taking him to Earth with him. You only need to make sure the boy goes to school, Frank." At the mention of Admiral Jonathan James Archer, Frank's lips twist and the connection between Earth and Deneva Prime is rudely cut off.

"Do you think he'll do it?" Winona asks softly into the strained silence.

"He hasn't any choice. If he doesn't, Jonathan will. He's a teen still, yes, but Jim's been through more in those short years than most in a lifetime." Hoshi allows that Jim is more like her than any other of her descendents, he prefers to be alone. She hopes that living away from the family, with only Frank to check in on him, will get him to be more outgoing. She knows how lonely being alone can be, and if Jim is either too comfortable or not comfortable enough with his family, they aren't helping – but hurting – him. Hoshi won't stand for it.

It's Trip that takes Jim to meet his great grandfather, Admiral Archer and his son Captain Toru. They tell him about how Trip lived when he should have died, and it somehow helps him to heal a broken and bleeding heart. He's given Sam his wedding ring, his blessing, and seen it put around Aurelan's finger. She could never have been theirs, because Sam was his brother. She was happy, and Jim was going to Earth to pretend he wasn't hurt.

Frank doesn't meet them, they go to the house and knock on the door and he isn't impressed by Admirals or Captains or nephews who might – or might not – need him. Jim isn't surprised, pretends to be pleased with the freedom that is actually negligence that Frank is just the uncle he needs.

Jim Kirk remembers Jack, the last man to call him James – the first person he loved, and lost. He goes out to celebrate, the lie at the tip of his tongue that he never uses - toasting his brother's wedding, because Frank never asks questions – ever.

Frank could care less why on his nineteen year old nephew brings home a bride and groom and takes them to bed. Samantha Grimm and Jack McCoy, who tell him about Sam's brother whose wife is Jocelyn – it was a double wedding for the sake of the twin siblings, all of them taking the McCoy name. She's a doctor, and so is her brother – but a soldier, and Jim wonders which profession he's better at, with a nickname like Reaper.

There is a holo on his bedside, of Aurelan and her babe. He's the first of three. Peter, Alexander, and Julius – it's when Julius is born that he goes out to a bar and meets a woman, dark and mysterious – who won't tell him her name. He fights for it, and it wins him nothing of her favor. But it is the night Captain Christopher Pike cares enough to challenge him to be better, do more.

Jim Kirk changes his life, and he does it in three years rather than the Academy's standard of four.


	5. Tricks of our Enterprise

 

_EDESNE_

_2267_

There is a ringing like bells that fills the normally calm heart of EDESNE. Jack Harkness jerks awake from where he lounges asleep in a chair that wouldn't be out of place under a 26th century cross-planetary corporation CEO's rear end.

The better for ass-kissing, Jack had always thought. It was not the most uncomfortable seat upon which to sleep. Jack Harkness has never heard the phone within EDESNE ring – and it does so about three times before Jack gets up and picks it up off the hook and brings it to his ear.

"Hello?" Jack asks into one end, looking about at EDESNE's interior somewhat nervously. It felt as if he was being watched. Or as if EDESNE has been waiting for this call – it's funny, although the Doctor's TARDIS had always looked like a blue police box, Jack couldn't recall the phone that had hung near the TARDIS's console ever ringing.

Or maybe it had, and he just was now too tired to remember.

"Hi, Jack – you don't know me yet, but trust me when I say it's good to hear your voice." It was a woman, relieved sounding and breathless, Jack blinks and rubs his eyes, wondering if he was still asleep and all of this was a very strange dream.

"Alright…a pleasure to meet you, Miss?" Jack tried to teasing rather than tired, but he could hear how successful it sounded – and it wasn't pretty. She makes no mention of it, she's not paying attention to his attempts at flirting…and that tells Jack that this is serious, dangerously so. He begins to pay attention.

"My name is Aurelan Kirk now, it was once Jenny – I was the Doctor's daughter. I need your help, Jack." Jack knows that the Doctor had had a family, he'd met the Doctor's wife after all – but never, _never_ had Jack met one of the Doctor's children or grandchildren for all that he had known that the Doctor had had them.

As protective as the Doctor was of the universe and righting the wrongs done to people both human and alien – of his family, Jack guessed he was even more so. It was, perhaps, why the Doctor had kept his name so secret – to protect the ones he loved.

It was good to hear that someone else from the Doctor's personal life had survived – and apparently thrived enough to get married.

"You've got it." Jack Harkness vows, and when EDESNE lurches into action and rumbles and roars like a lion around him, he doesn't blame her.

"We'll find you." Jack promises, but there isn't anyone on the other end of the phone anymore.

EDESNE grinds to a halt, not where Jack wants to be – but where he needs to be. In that much EDESNE is like the TARDIS. Jack doesn't flatter himself to think he's like the Doctor – he's just a man who doesn't die. The Doctor did die, but Jack will be damned if he let's the Doctor's daughter die.

Jack's surprised when he opens EDESNE's door and finds the beaches of the Aurelius Ocean.

"This is Deneva." Jack looks back upon EDESNE and finds he is surprised again. EDESNE stands naked upon the sunny and warm sands of Deneva, the chameleon circuit – cloaking device - camouflage unit, call it what you will – Jack only knows that he's never seen EDESNE like this.

Sleek and silver like a giant's bullet, standing a little taller than he is, but sinister. Jack wonders if the TARDIS unit was designed to be something like a weapon, for surely they can and have done devastating damage. Jack feels a little breathless at the sight of it. Like seeing a sentient bomb; it might go off, it might not, and it all depends on if you piss it off.

"Alright, _alright_ , I'll find her – you…you stay here, hear me?" What kind of response Jack expects from EDESNE, but he doesn't get any. He only looks over his shoulder one last time before EDESNE is out of sight. He hopes he doesn't find out what happens if he doesn't come back.

This isn't Jack's first trip to Deneva with EDESNE, but before – he'd always thought she'd stopped here to soak in the Denevan crystals and dilithium. He didn't know exactly what a ship like EDESNE ran upon, whatever source of energy it was, it wasn't anything that Jack had ever seen put into any kind of engine. He remembered though, all too well, how the Doctor had treated his TARDIS as if alive – and maybe that was so.

If EDESNE came to Deneva for the sunshine and warmth and beaches like Jack looked forward to, he wasn't going to argue it.

Yet, just this once, on a warm summer day with blue skies…the beaches were empty. Despite the heat, Jack got a cold sticky feeling in his gut at the sight of all that empty sand. A boardwalk, charmingly wooden and rustic led to the sidewalks and streets of the city. Jack didn't know its name, but as he walked along he saw no one. It was eerie, he'd seen abandoned ships of all kinds – he'd visited ghost towns, and deserted planets. Yet a whole city was something else. He wished he knew its name.

It was just strange and creeping quiet, street after street.

"Oh, no…" Jack rubs a hand over his face, as if to hide from the sight. A school, with no kids in the school yard – and Jack doesn't know if it was a school day, or if school was even in session in this season on Deneva. Yet he knows he can't walk past this. He has to see, had to make sure, or he'll always wonder and worry at it, enough to have nightmares for a lifetime.

Jack Harkness goes in, and sees much what he expected. The halls are empty, the lockers and school things in disarray, as if someone had had a panicked temper tantrum. He's grateful for the fact that wherever the people went, the kids seemed to have gone with them – there isn't any blood here, no bodies of innocents.

His eye catches a name on the door, Aurelan J. Kirk…Jack wonders if that J. stood for Jenny, the Doctor's daughter. He has to find her, has to help – somehow – Jack doesn't pause to ponder if it's right or wrong to go poking though her stuff, for surely if she was in a rush to get to safety and expected someone to come to help her she would have left a clue on where she – and everyone – went.

Jack only takes one look inside, and knows - Aurelan had been a history teacher. Jack can't help the chuckle that bubbles out of his mouth, if it sounds hysterical to him – no one else is around to hear – and that's the problem. Jack takes a look around, searching for a lesson like clues, and he sees a paper – a map of the underground sewage system.

It's a hope, and Jack clings to it. He knows he's gotten lucky, or maybe it's EDESNE who knows him perhaps better than he knows himself. Knows he couldn't walk away from a children's school - knows too, somehow, that Aurelan taught here. Jack doesn't question it – he takes himself to the nearest manhole (and stifles a giggle that proves he needs to find people, quickly, or start worrying about his sanity) and drops down.

The world below the city is a maze, cold and damp – the flip side of the sunny warmth above – yet, somehow…it feels safer.

"Don't move." Pressed against his lower back is something, and if the voice is anything to judge by – it's dangerous.

' _Safe -_ _so much for that feeling_ ….' Jack thinks to himself with a roll of his eyes.

"Whoa, whoa, now - don't do anything hasty that you might regret – I'm here to help." Jack looks over his shoulder and sees a boy. For just a moment that boy is another, and Jack is on Tarsus IV with James and orphans. He blinks, and the boy is still blue eyed and sandy haired and pale – but no James.

Jack had heard of what happened to Tarsus IV, the rescue, the handful of survivors out of so many victims, and he hadn't had the heart to go looking for one child that might not have survived. It might have made him try to convince EDESNE to go back and change things, over and over, stuck in a loop that did nothing to fix anything but hurt the heart more and more.

"What…what's your name?" The boy demands it, looking upward at the manhole nervously as if he expects someone to follow Jack down. It makes Jack think that this is not the first encounter of this kind that the youth has had.

"I'm Jack Harkness, I've come to help out the daughter of a old friend of mine. Her name is Aurelan Kirk. Do you know her?" Jack keeps his voice calm, warm and friendly. Just like a passing good natured neighbor. Warily, the boy nods. It's just a little bit of trust – and that's all the reason that Jack needs to help him.

"If you let me, I'll close the manhole's cover, alright? What's your name?" Jack doesn't wait for the boy's go-ahead; he covers up the one entrance – and one exit. The thing the boy has at his back is a phaser. Jack can't tell if it's type-1 or type-2, he only sees that it isn't a type-3, a so called phaser rifle. Such a thing can stun, heat, kill, or disintegrate living beings. Jack swallows his mouth feeling like sandpaper.

"I'm Noban. I'll take you to her, to Aurelan." Jack nods, and the Noban puts away his phaser into a belt he wears about his waist, looking a little comical, like a miniature cowboy. Jack sees his serious expression and wary eyes and doesn't say anything, following the boy like a disproportioned shadow.

There's a steel door ahead and Noban knocks away on it in a code, and it's opened up by another boy – this one with dark hair and dark blue eyes. He looks at Noban who nods toward Jack. There's something about those blue eyes that is frighteningly familiar. It's like the Doctor's eyes, eyes that had seen the best and worst of worlds – and held it all together and dared the universe to throw something at him that he couldn't walk away from.

Those were the eyes of the Doctor at his darkest. It breaks Jack's heart.

"He wants to talk to your mom, Peter – says he's here to help." Noban sneers toward Jack, as if he certainly doesn't think Jack can do something as useful as that. Jack manages a shaky grin for this grandson of the Doctor – even as he wonders if the Doctor ever held him, ever knew he was born, ever was a grandfather for him.

"That so, doesn't look like much." Peter remarks, and it isn't one that Jack is meant to respond to – so he doesn't. Almost grudgingly, Peter opens the door wider, and Noban and Jack slip through.

"Mom's this way." Peter announces, as he goes – and expects Jack to follow. Noban keeps to the steel door, watching them go – his phaser in his hands, they don't shake. Jack thinks of old stories, stories of a Peter Pan and his Lost Boys. What's out there that has them hiding like this?

Aurelan Kirk is a lovely dark haired woman, whose sons all have what Jack think most likely fair hair under the sun. She's reading a nap-time story to two twins; little boys that Jack doesn't doubt are hers. They cuddle against each other like puppies. It isn't until she finishes that she gives each of her little boys a kiss on the head and walks to where Peter and Jack are just outside the little room that Aurelan has made into a bedroom – what it was before, Jack thinks was probably a boiler.

"Jenny…" Jack shakes his head, for that isn't her name – and Jack never called her that, but at that name Aurelan smiles warmly, opens her arms and hugs him to her tightly. As if he's the long lost son of her oldest friend – not the other way around. She kisses him on each side of his cheeks, and Peter's eyes flick away, a small blush crossing his freckled face.

"Jack…hello, it's so good to finally meet you." Aurelan holds onto his arm as if she can't let go of him. He understands it; they are the last ones who knew the Doctor, who had a Time Lord shape them.

"What's happened here…Aurelan?" This time he uses the name her son Peter won't frown at him so much for.

"An invasion of sorts ….or the beginning of one, have you heard of Ingraham B?"

"We got a cargo that originated from there with a few stops along the way, out there is a neural parasite - during day time it's safe enough. Natural light seems to keep them away, that's where my Sam is right now, out there looking for food for all of us. They…I think they are the beginnings of what becomes the Borg." The Borg, now _those_ Jack knows of – has had nightmares of.

"The neural parasites look like this; we've only seen them attached to their hosts. Like hand-sized brain cells, yes? What's more there is a hive mind going on here, a communication between them I've never seen anything like. It's been going on, as far as I can tell, for about two hundred years…" Jack wonders how Jenny, the Doctor's daughter came to be here, perhaps stranded without a ship of her own she'd made the best of it. She'd made a life for herself and lived it as the Doctor had never really had a chance to.

Jack shakes his head, putting away thoughts of how the Borg has terrorized countless quadrants and how these people here suffered terror and pain. There might be a connection – there might not be – but Jack's determined to save as many as he can, here and now.

"How many are there of you?" Jack asks softly, Aurelan looks toward the steel door as if it's the only thing that stands between them and their deaths.

"Mostly the children, my students, Noban's father Menen…my Sam, our boys and me - all together less than a hundred." Jack had seen that city, empty of people – perhaps those infected by the parasite had been hiding in the buildings while the sunlight was up. How many others who had been infected had been killed?

"I can get you out, all of you – it might be a bit of a tight fit, EDESNE isn't as big as your father's TARDIS was…but she'll get us off Deneva safely." Jack has never really had need to explore all of EDESNE, but he thinks if the Doctor's daughter needed it EDESNE could manage more than a hundred. He thinks of how many people must have built and lived in this city, thousands – maybe more. It makes him sick to think there are so few survivors.

"We'll go, all of us – once Sam and the others get back, pass the word along Peter." Peter, with his dark blue eyes, so like the Doctor's – he just nods at his mother's words, as if he can't imagine why he wouldn't obey her. Aurelan looks after him in sorrow, which she quickly hides.

It isn't the longest wait Jack Harkness has ever endured, and Aurelan keeps him good company, and once the boys and girls who act as a little army of her protectors get used to Jack (he can't say they ever quite warm up to him) he's entertained well enough.

"Was I the only one you called for help?" Jack asks Aurelan, who shakes her head.

"Sam sent out a brief distress call, but there's been no answer to it." What she didn't say was that she didn't think it would do any good, too little - too late. If people got into trouble out here on the fringe worlds… that was usually how things ended. Jack had helped people out here – yet for every planet or ship he helped, there were others – suffering – that he couldn't save. No one – not even the Doctor – could be everywhere at once.

"They're here!" Noban hollers as he pulls hard to pry open the steel door, Peter joins him and they have it open before Jack can go to help. He just stands in the doorway as Sam and his fellow scavengers come in. Sam, Jack can't deny – looks like _James_ , a wilder James, with a mustache, and golden blond hair that hasn't had a haircut and is hanging about his shoulders like a lion's mane.

"My name's George Samual Kirk, not James – James Tiberius Kirk is my little brother, he goes by Jim now though, so I heard on the news comm before it died." Jack Harkness had never thought that James had survived – and this…this was James's family. He'd never felt so lost, no even when Rose and the Doctor had fled from him, and left him to live and die his lifetimes alone through Earth's history.

"Is…is he here?" Jack hears himself ask, but he doesn't' have much hope of it.

"Captain Jim Kirk… here? No, you must be kidding – half the family is here, but Jimmy ran to Earth as soon as Aurelan and I married, he's on the bridge of the Enterprise somewhere up there." There is both hurt and pride in what Sam says. Jack wants to hear all about James, all about the Enterprise – and why had Jack never paid much attention to this boring span of history, before this? Jack shakes those questions away, and smiles as charmingly as he can.

"I'm Jack Harkness, I'm here to get you out of here and off Deneva, as per the lady's request." Jack winks at Aurelan, and if it's half-hearted, he tries not to show it. He remembers advice he once gave James, to never flirt with one-half of a couple and he offers his hand to Sam – and when Sam takes it, he doesn't get it back as Jack leads him to the steal door and does the honors of opening it, bowing Sam and Aurelan out – watching them all go, old and young and all of them trusting him. He won't let them down – it's not a promise, not a vow – it's a fact.

They are out of the sewers and the sunlight is fading with every minute, a pretty and dangerous sunset.

"Where to next?" Sam asks, helping Jack up and out of Deneva's sewer systems.

"The beach, EDESNE is there." Sam looks to the sky, his expression like someone anticipating failing, and death – but determined to try, so others thrive. Jack wraps an arm around him with a grin.

"We can get there." Jack tells him – tells them all, a handful of people out of thousands. They survived that, they can survive this. Jack doesn't know if it's his words or Sam's smile, but they nod among each other, restless and worried – but willing.

Hoping...

That hope is all Jack needs as he takes the lead, past streets that seem to get longer with the lengthening the of shadow at his side. They get to the boardwalk, wooden and weathered, and the sand all around surrounding them – and from behind Jack sees a crowd, shuffling and moaning.

If Jack had ever thought of what zombies might look like, this was a hoard of them – but they were living, and breathing, their faces twisted in agony and pulsing pinkish natural parasites urging them on – on and faster, into attacking.

With every step the people protested it, resisted and cried out against it - but it wasn't enough to make the pain and steps stop.

It was somehow the worst thing Jack had ever seen.

"Come on, let's go people!" Peter yells, seeing what Jack does.

Peter and Jack herd the others, straggling old folk and toddling children along, like they are the sheep and Jack is the sheep dog and the wolves are at his heels. Jack sees EDESNE, sees Aurelan put her hands on shining silver and it opens and the others with her pour in, one by one, and two by two.

It's like seeing what Noah's ark should have been, not simply his family saved – but as many as Noah could have fit within, and all the animals as well. Yet Jack can't save the people shuffling and stumbling and sobbing in pain behind him, following in their footsteps in sand.

"We'll come back for you!" Jack tells them over his shoulder, as Peter takes his hand and yanks on him, urging him along, a little boy hurrying a grown man as much as he can.

Peter sees it when the closest of those infected by the neural parasites grabs onto Jack, as if to keep him with them – he sees it when the pink cell leaps onto Jack Harkness – who screams and keeps screaming, he falls to the sand and writhes as if wrestling with something, twitching and jerking weakly, struggling still. It's because of those struggles and those screams that Peter can't leave him just laying there in the sand, alone and in agony.

"Daddy! Mommy!" Peter fires his phaser, not aiming, but standing over Jack's body and determined to keep a distance between _them_ and him. The distance is inches – but enough, enough for Sam and Aurelan to grab onto Jack and yank him the final few steps into EDESNE – who slams the doors shut once Peter is the last one in.

Jack's screams fill the heart of EDESNE, and it shudders and beats and flings the ship to one of the few people Jack calls friend and means family.

0o0o0

It's a normal day for Doctor Leonard McCoy, until he hears a hauntingly familiar sound, a warning like a grinding and alarm. He looks around and sees a new door, it opens and people are piling into his sickbay, most of them look like they haven't showered in a week – and most of them smell like a sewer.

"Doctor to bridge, Captain - come down here now – we've got, uh, stowaways?" Bones sort of hates that it sounds like he's asking rather than telling, but at least he's done his job in telling Captain Jim Kirk to get his lazy ass down here, now. Bones is not diplomatic or political, he's spent most all of his life either fixing people up or taking them down.

The sickbay is his place – and the only reason he's watching and not reacting is because it's clear that these people need help.

" _Stowaways_ , Bones?" Jim Kirk sounds doubtful, like he suspects this is all a trick to get him down her for a physical or a test of some new medicine Bones wants to give a try.

"Sensors are reading numerous life forms, human." Spock, the know it all – chimes in. It's useful; Bones thinks – but only sometimes – to have a logical Vulcan First Officer in Science.

"On our way, Bones." Jim says, and doesn't say ' _don't die'_ but it comes through loud and clear to Bones. Who isn't really too worried about that – it's almost imposable to kill him, for one – and for another thing, these people are all very young or old and most of them look more confused than Doctor McCoy.

"Where are we?" A boy, older than the two twin boys whose hands he's holding, but not by much demands of Bones.

"The Starship Enterprise, sick bay." The people stop coming through the new door, and Bones peers into it hoping that no more will be making a surprise appearance.

"Don't die, Jack, don't die." It's faint, a woman's voice, pleading. They are tucked into a corner behind a console, because the door is somehow connected – not to a closet which should be all that could fit, but to a whole huge looking chamber – it's very familiar – and so is the name Jack.

"It can't be." Bones says to himself, aloud, as his heart starts to pound in his hears in something he recognizes as panic.

Yet it's true, Bones knows as soon as he sees them – him – a strikingly lovely woman, with ruby red lips and dark hair like Snow White, her sorrow making her all the lovelier, in her lap is Jack's sweating face, blood is leaking from his eyes – his mouth and nose. Bones doesn't have long. He hurry's over – and who gets in his way but a look alike of his Captain, wilder, and fierce as any beast.

"Out of my way, Jack – _Jack Harkness_ , can you hear me?" Bones gives this Jim Kirk-look-alike he'd never give his Jim, his Jim would know better than to get in his way in the first place. His look is full of all the blood that Bones had shed that of his own and others, and a steel of will that won't be bent.

Wisely, the older Jim Kirk look alike gets out of his way. Bones kneels down next to the first man he called friend and meant it, the man he would have called brother, or father, if he'd allowed himself to.

Jack Harkness opens his bloody eyes and his lips curl into something that could have been a smile if you squinted.

"Reaper…" The word alarms the woman, who looks at him, stricken and so pale. Bones has to wonder who she is to him. ' _Later'_ , he promises himself half-heartedly, ' _I'll ask him later_.'

"Aw, Jack, what have you gone and done to yourself?" Bones looks him over, his words coming out long and drawled.

"Can you heal it?" Bones asks of Jack, taking the other man's hand in his and holding tight, as if he can keep Jack from dying just by that grip.

"Don't know. Hurts, hurts so much. _Everything_. Bloody parasite tore me up, inside. Trying to, to…" Jack trails off, and Bones gulps for air so he doesn't start to panic. A doctor can't panic, can't hyperventilate, or have hysterics.

" _James_ …" Jack says, broken, and tries to smile, warm as anything.

Bones looks over his shoulder and sees Jim Kirk standing there, still as a statue and pale as if he's seeing a ghost.

"Jimmy?" The Captain's look alike says, and Bones thinks – of course – of course they are family. He sees a smudge of something like sludge, burnt black and charred against the floor of EDESNE. He hasn't the time to find out what it is and cure Jack of it's effects – it looks like Jack and EDESNE wasted that time fighting it – killing it – so Jack could be himself, at the end.

"Sam, Aurelan …who…who is he?" Jim Kirk asks his brother, though he has eyes only for Jack Harkness.

"My father's friend, a hero, Jack Harkness…." Aurelan blushes her fingers against Jack's hair, getting it out of his eyes. Bones knows she's Sam's wife – knows that Sam is Jim's big brother and that's why they look alike. Who Aurelan is to Jack – or who Jack is to Auralan's father – that's a mystery that Bones can't, doesn't _have time_ , to guess at.

"Bones, Bones - you've got to save him." Leonard McCoy curls his fingers to try to feel Jack Harkness's pulse at his wrist, but there isn't one to find. There's nothing there to find. Jack's eyes stare at him – at Jim, and Bones can never ask what's so funny that he's got that stupid smirk on his face.

"He's dead, Jim." Bones says it – but John "the Reaper" Grimm doesn't believe it. He does nothing but sits silently by the body. He'll be here when Jack revives – he has to.

"Captain …Jim…I am sorry for your loss." Spock, it's Spock saying that, and Reaper wants to shut him up, shove a gun in his face and make him apologize for even insinuating that Jack Harkness ever lost to anything.

"Don't say that, Spock." Bones doesn't sound anything like himself, it's because he's not himself – he's Reaper, and he's watched Jack die and Jack….he can beat a stupid neural parasite.

_He has to._

Auralan looks at _him_ , at Jack – at Jim, at her husband Sam and at Spock andNyota Uhura. She's waiting too, if only because Reaper is. She doesn't look like she knows what she's waiting for. Gently, very gently as if she's afraid that Reaper will strike her if she's not careful, she closes Jack Harkness's blue, dead eyes.

"Jim…" Nyota's voice is full of pain, and Reaper remembers that she and Spock and Jim had a thing. She and Spock must be hurting for Jim's sake, Jim who was kneeling beside Reaper. He's crying, crying like he'd found something – someone – he loved and lost, and now he's just lost. Just like Reaper.

How will he tell Samantha, his sister – the only person he has left?

Jim touches his shoulder, his grip firm, there and solid and real – as if all the rest of it isn't - Reaper doesn't think it's enough –it'll never be enough, he never got to say goodbye, never got to tell Jack just what he meant to him…to them, to everyone he ever saved.

Jim starts to say something, only it's nothing in a language that Reaper knows – Nyota gasps in surprise. His grip on Reaper is hard and yet Reaper can't bring himself to protest.

"What is he saying?" Spock asks, hushed and reverent.

"I…he's saying goodbye, oh, Jim…it's…" Nyota Uhura understands languages better, sometimes, than she does people, and what Jim says is clearly beautiful, full of feeling and that's all Reaper needs to know – at least someone is saying goodbye, for all that Jack can't hear him.

Reaper would want Jack to hear him.

Reaper brings the hand that Jack had held onto as he died, and he kisses it, barely there butterfly kisses, on each finger – and Spock, who must see the palm of Jack's hand, he hisses like a surprised cat.

"What is it?" Nyota asks of him, hushed. There are marking upon Jack's palm, and Reaper and his sister Dr. Grimm never asked about them. It's clear enough that Spock recognizes them- so they are Vulcan after all, Samantha had always had her suspicions.

"The House of Surak, the mark of Aourial, a god out of my people's past – the sunburst, it means they mated while Vulcan was at war, there were three of them – one of them Surak, his wife Tolk'n – and his partner, whose name was never written. Surak came back to Vulcan without them, in mourning…" Spock's voice is faint, but Reaper listens, if this is the only way he gets to know a part of Jack that was kept from him, he'll be greedy.

The starburst is upon the fleshy part of Jack's palm which becomes his thumb; between the two fingers that part for the Ta'al are two lines, bold and proudly put. Reaper's finger brushes them, and Spock speaks up again, as if asked.

"Once, Ta'al was a goddess too, of children, for their arrival brought peace to us by those who were **T'hy'la**. They are his children; their names are too small to be read by the naked eye." Beneath the names of Jack's children was a gorge, a scar, a crude half circle upon the center of his palm, Reaper could tell that Jack had done it to himself.

"This?" Reaper demands to know, his voice soft as any threat.

"Shariel, our moon god, a death god - his sign is that, half the moon." Reaper knows what that meant; Jack had seen his wife, his child - dead, bones before his waking eyes. His hope had been faint that Surak had got away with Tal'n without Jack. Yet with his own ears Reaper had heard that Surak had lived, and he wondered at what Jack would have done, knowing that.

"Spock?" Nyota murmurs, hearing in Spock's words what they do not. Spock can not lie to her, and not to Jim, it is not in the nature of his people to lie to loved ones.

"He is my ancestor, Nyota - I am of the House of Surak, by my father Sarek, by my forefather Skon, by my second forefather Solkar, by all of them until Tal'n son of Surak…or, perhaps, this man." Jack Harkness is clearly human, but so too had been Spock's mother Amanda, and Spock found it did not hurt to know he was perhaps not the first born of humans and Vulcan.

"Damn-it, Jack Harkness, you can't just do this!" Reaper hollers, holding so tightly to Jack's hand he doesn't notice when it grips him back, hard, but he does notice when Jack takes a shuddering, shaking breath inhaling, and gasping back to life.

" _Finally_ …you had me worried..." Reaper tells him, and Jack's eyes flutter open, blue and beautiful, his grin heart breaking in his charm.

"I didn't know you cared so much." Jack looks to their joined hands as if it's a normal sort of thing.

"I'll show you how much I care, Harkness." Reaper, he uses their joined hands to pull Jack in close and kiss him breathless, until Jack is clinging to him, murmuring "miss you" and small little things that Reaper hears and loves.

EDESNE hums and it's like a heartbeat, calm and soothing, a heart at home. A ship that's found shelter and more, berth within the Enterprise.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

**End**

**Author's Note:**

> I rarely put in a little note about titles, but so you aren't confused about what I'm referencing; in Old Norse "vig" is war, and "dis" is goddess; for me this always brings to mind Freyja, the lady (literally, that's what her name means), goddess of among other things, love, beauty, fertility, gold, witchcraft; war, and death. You might say she was among the first "grim reapers". As well, it's my pleasure to tie that to John "Reaper" Grimm, played by a certain Karl Urban, who if you are not aware, also plays Leonard McCoy in the new alternate-universe "Star Trek" movie. Of course, "vale" is also in that title, which while commonly referring to a lush river bottom, also has connections with shadows and tears – usually as river (Riverside, Iowa; birthplace of Original!Kirk) bottoms tend to flood, thus drowning the innocent; so you may rest assured I'm content with knotting many meanings behind a title.
> 
> Going back to be beginning, there is a reason Freyja is a goddess I mention; namely, there will be lots of (male) loving in this fiction.
> 
> How to say EDESNE:
> 
> Time  
> And  
> Relative  
> Dimensions  
> In  
> Space
> 
> EDESNE –(Edes Ne; Des-tiny: "End Is Nay")  
> Ed-Eden  
> Es-Esme  
> Ne - Knee

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Moonlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6092146) by [Heline_Zhang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heline_Zhang/pseuds/Heline_Zhang)




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